


Like Watching Someone Fall

by alittlenutjob, Likerealpeopledo



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 19:18:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4717460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlenutjob/pseuds/alittlenutjob, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She thinks about what he said to her, that you’re allowed to want to change your life. They both changed their life, but it turns out you don’t get to control what it changes into.</p><p>**no S4 spoilers**</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The apartment is perpetually overflowing with baby gifts and cellophane wrapped fruit baskets. 

Danny’s begun to share Mindy’s fear that the FedEx man has grown to hate them, drawn primarily from the resounding thud with which each package is delivered. They can barely keep up with the  thank you notes, and they're forever sidestepping life-size stuffed bears and bulky push toys in primary colors that seem to appear more and more regularly with each passing day. 

And toys aren’t the only things they’ve been sidestepping lately.

Coming back from India, he’s been so proud of himself, as though he’s accomplished this amazing feat--this insurmountable obstacle of Meeting The Parents--when the reality is, it is just something that he should have done all along. 

Mindy isn’t parcelling her time in the same ways anymore; she’s counting to her due date in weeks, measuring the baby's growth in parsnips and pumpkins. And the time she's spent gauging Danny's love for her in grand gestures and sweeping moments of cinematic romance, she wonders what it really adds up to anymore. 

In a way, it’s harder living in the space between the big gestures, trying to string them into something that feels more true, more real than all the other time in between. Because the hardest truth, the one that it’s taken her this many weeks after India to admit, is that she doesn’t have the luxury of time anymore. And despite all his promises and all of his declarations of love, marriage is the only way she will ever really know that Danny is truly all-in.

It’s just now she’s accepted that the biggest gamble is expecting that he’ll change his mind.

It’s taken her weeks to rationalize his rejection of marriage, and intellectually, she can accept that it has almost nothing to do with her. 

Almost. 

And terrifyingly, she probably could go on with things as they are for a few more weeks, or months, or even years. But the truth is, she can’t afford to build a home inhabited by two people with diametrically opposed viewpoints on what constitutes a commitment, and one very innocent victim in their emotional cold war.  

Not in this lifetime, anyway. Maybe next time. 

The front door swings open, and another load of gifted bottle warmers and diaper genies and baby business enters the apartment, with only Danny’s left ear and the bottom half of two jean-clad legs visible. 

“I ran into Mr. FedEx again, and there was definitely a disapproving glare. Min, he had resentment in his gait. Resentment! We’ve gotta call someone. Is there an 800 number around here? I’ve got a bone to pick.” 

He sorts through the myriad packages as if one of them has his answer, and pauses when he finally heeds Mindy’s lack of investment in his newfound vendetta, “What’s up, babe?”

She wants to be able to look him directly in the eye but that makes him seem too vulnerable-- he has no idea what’s coming \--so instead she concentrates on the way his dark curls stick to his forehead, the result of his quick walk in the afternoon swelter.  His skin glows, giving him the appearance of an extraterrestrial.  

“Can we talk?” She steers him toward their living space, helping him to stack the boxes neatly on the kitchen island. “I just needed to--can we hold off on this for a second? I have something I need to say.” 

As many weeks as she’s spent formulating her reasoning for needing to leave (needing, because it isn’t the same as wanting, and she wants to do this as much as she wants to watch the Weather Channel or  The Fast and the Furious movies), she isn’t prepared for the reality of it. She isn’t sure how anyone prepares for this, for leaving. 

“I think…I’ve been thinking,” She takes one of his hands into both of hers, “We really need to talk about how we’re defining our family, Danny, and I’m beginning to feel like we don’t have the same ideas.”

“What is this about? I told you—“ Danny’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and it takes her breath away, how much his profile looks like the one she’s seen in the sonograms, how much the baby she carries reminds her of what she loves about his father. And how much she needs to protect both of them. “That’s not…why are…There’s more than one way to have a family.”

She smiles ruefully, “You getting progressive on me now, Castellano?” 

“Mindy.”

It occurs to her that as far as she is concerned, he’s always been the same hollow chasm of deadbeat dads and post- divorce cynicism, and she fell in love with him anyway. She took the chance that would be how he stayed, and she can’t really be surprised that this is the result.

“We’re always going to be connected. He connects us. I know you’re going to be a great father, Danny. I know you are.”

“And you’re…wait, what’s happening right now, Mindy?” 

“Let’s just—you know, friends can have a baby together. Like you said, there’s more than one way to have a family. People do it all the time. Look at Ross and Rachel.”

And if Danny was at all concerned about fictional characters making a go of it, he’d have been at least slightly comforted by her comparison. “I don’t know who they are. I don’t want to know who they are. I just-- I want you. Us. Our family." Even the word family is starting to feel like something impossible to unravel, too complicated and intricate and tangled to be likely.

His features are already a jumble of the ruin she had feared she’d cause and remorse seizes her gut preemptively. She isn’t even finished. This isn’t even the beginning. 

She pushes herself off the sofa, and Danny leans over to aid in her propulsion, his hand warm, wide, and familiar on her back. She hasn’t gotten more than a few feet when she trips over a package that her widening mid-section has obscured from her sight, and manages to steady herself with the door knob. 

Danny bridges the distance between them physically with three sharp strides, cupping at her elbow, attempting to steer her away from the exit, and back toward him.  She still hasn’t looked him in the eye.

Somewhere, she finds the words she needs, “He needs a family that isn’t compromising every part of themselves to stay together.”

“Okay.  Wait.  I feel like I came in late here.  Please, start from the beginning.  Walk it by me slow.”  

She isn’t sure she knows how to tell him that she’s tired of awarding him extra credit for things that should be his regular homework.  That relationships aren’t supposed to be two people pleading for two entirely different things all the time.  “Sometimes I think that you expect me to be okay with just taking you at your word.  Like you can say that you love me, but then, you can’t possibly consider marrying me.  How is that supposed to make me feel?”

“I don’t...those two things, they aren’t mutually exclusive.  We talked about this, at my Mom’s house.  I went to India!  I know I didn’t do the right thing right away, but I did it eventually.  You can’t keep punishing me for old mistakes.  It’s not fair.”

She knows it’s not how justice works, that neither of them can really win, but she knows that she’s fighting for what she and her son deserve.  “Danny, this isn’t working.”

“What are you talking about?  You’re having my baby.  I’d say this is working pretty well.”

“But look around, Danny.  Is this all you want for us?  This isn’t how I pictured my life.  It’s not what I wanted for myself.”

“What do you mean, is this all?  This is--we have a house, and a baby, and I’m committed to you, I am.  This is all a misunderstanding.  It’s just a big misunderstanding.”  He trails off dumbly.

“No, I think I understand pretty well right now.   It’s just that you aren’t willing to say the one thing I need to hear to make us whole.”

He doesn’t ask what the one thing is, even though she wishes he would. “You can’t do this to me, Min. You can’t do this to him,” Danny gestures to her womb, and the baby kicks in response, probably to help his father articulate his point.

Her voice emerges threadbare and worn, fraying more with each word, even though internally something has steeled, as if in protection. “You know something, Danny? We were so much better as friends. We knew each other better. No one ever knew me as well as you did then.” 

Panic rises behind Danny’s eyes, “No. I don’t want that.”

She reaches out to touch his cheek, no longer bothering to restrain her tears, “I don’t want us to hate each other, either. I don’t want that for him.”

"Why are you talking like this? Like I can’t even…like I can’t do anything to fix…I don’t even know what’s broken. Tell me what’s broken. I’ll fix it. I promise. I promise." 

A knee or elbow jams into the wall of her uterus as the baby shifts positions, causing Mindy a sharp intake of breath, “It’s not that simple, Danny.  You can’t just build us a new closet, or follow me to the top of the Empire State Building now.  Because I can’t explain to him why his parents,” She rests her hands on either side of her rounded belly, as if covering the fetus’ ears with maternal earmuffs. “Love each other differently. I can’t do that.”

Danny’s eyebrows furrow, as the realization climbs up his neck, and settles behind his blazing eyes. “What do you mean, love each other differently? Why are you acting like what I feel for you isn’t enough? Why can’t it be?” 

Maybe that is what it is, after all. Saying that he loves her, over and over, as apology, as expectation, as solution, as foundation, as everything, it doesn’t fill the gaps the way that marriage could. Men have told her they loved her before, and she was still left wondering if she ever knew them at all. She was still left.

He crosses his arms over his chest, bobbing on the balls of his feet, his fight stance winning out over his need to placate her, his tone suddenly crisp, “What is your plan here, exactly? We break up, and you're just going to date? You think anybody else is going to want to date you, when you're eight months pregnant with another man's child?"

She shakes her head.

“So what, we sell the house that I bought for you to raise our family, and you gallivant off into the sunset because you’re not getting your way? Is that what this is?” Spittle sticks to the corner of his mouth, and she knows that he’s lost the thread of the conversation. “Well, Mindy, I hope you’re right, and I hope that when you explain this to our son, you explain to him that this wasn’t my choice. This was all you, sweetheart. You ruined his life. You did this. This was your choice.” 

It doesn't take away the sting, but the cruelty of his words gives her strength; because it means he thinks she really can do this, actually walk away, and it makes her believe that maybe she can.


	2. Chapter 2

This time isn’t like the first time they broke up, except maybe it is a little, with the roles reversed.

Danny gives her the cold shoulder, she tries to find little ways to make inroads back inside. She leaves him small gifts that she thinks he’d like--a new Yankees coffee mug, a Springsteen-signed vintage LP of _Cover Me_ \--only to notice them later occupying the trash can placed neatly outside his locked office for Doris to empty each evening.  

She can’t get within thirty feet of him without his stalking off.  She actually watches him vault the reception desk once, in an effort to make a more efficient escape. He’s angry, because he should be, and he reacts in all the ways she’s come to expect, although it doesn’t make his aloofness any easier to bear.

Everyone in the office is on tenterhooks, careful not to spark any portion of the tiny Italian powder keg they’re working alongside, and Mindy finds herself peeking out of her office door before she opens it fully, tiptoeing toward the exam and break rooms, so as not to disturb anyone.  She’s always been the kind of person who made her life’s dramas belong to the collective--Mindy Lahiri’s Guide to Emotional Socialism--if she felt it, everyone felt it.  But this emptiness seems solitary, and worse yet, sometimes even earned.

Legal documents begin to appear on her desk at odd intervals. First to arrive are the mortgage documents, marking the official dissolution of the life that Danny attempted to build in Harlem without her express consent.  The ink barely dry, the mail carrier unceremoniously bears a petition for joint custody of their unborn child, gleefully prepared by unnecessarily embittered, and now wholly vindicated Cliff Gilbert, Attorney At Law.  

*****

She never remembers to lock her front door, and for obvious reasons, she’s stopped sleeping with her favorite knife. She can’t sleep anyway, and explanations vary.  Maybe it’s the vivid and frightening recurring dreams of the baby’s arm emerging ghost-like through her navel or the constant bodily discomfort that keeps her from a full night’s sleep.  And she can’t underestimate the power of the near-constant bladder emptying, or the incidental in-betweens. She shuffles back from the bathroom for the fourth time that night, and bumps stomach first into a skulking figure in her narrow hallway.

Their collective eardrums threaten to shatter with the force of her screams.

“What the hell? Are you insane? What are you…why are you…”

Danny grabs at both her elbows to prevent the inevitable beat down of furious fists, and she can’t help but smell the cigarettes and the bourbon, and see how his pupils don’t quite seem to focus, “Too loud.” He reaches back up to his head and cringes.

“Oh stop being such a baby. You shouldn’t be here. You deserve a brain injury for scaring me half to death. I could have given birth out of fright.”

“That isn’t medically possible, and you know it.” He scowls.

“All right, there’s still time to involve the police, Intruder.” She pushes him out of the way to avail herself of the facilities for the second time in as many minutes and calls out to him from behind the closed door. “You have thirty seconds to explain yourself, Castellano.”

She hears what she presumes is Danny’s head thumping against the door frame, and when she emerges, he’s slid down the wall to a half crouching position, his knees hunched uncomfortably up near his shoulders. “I needed to see you.”

“And you thought 2 a.m. was the appropriate time?  We’ll be in the office in seven hours. Seven and a half, tops. Okay, thanks to you, now it’s gonna be at least eight.”

He cranes his neck to look at her, and she offers him both of her hands to guide him back to his feet. “I needed to see you not at work. I already don’t see you at home.” He frowns. “I miss the baby. I miss you.” He looks down at their interlocked fingers, and back up at her.

This isn’t how it was supposed to be, and he seems suddenly out of place, here in her new apartment. Here, she’s supposed to be safe, because the new place has never held a single memory that contained Danny Castellano. And now he sits, seeping into the drywall.

And anyway, it isn’t as if she doesn’t miss him too. If she couldn’t sleep, Danny would watch the CNN news ticker with her, while rubbing her swollen feet and simultaneously detailing a litany of DiBlasio complaints and grievances, and of the two, she almost misses the DiBlasio rants more.

The air in her new apartment is much too still with only her there.

Mindy waddles toward the living room, although if she’s honest, it may be more justifiably labelled existing. She settles onto the sofa, as Danny perches warily on the arm, among her most colorful pillows, the lack of brightness in his face a noticeable juxtaposition.

“This isn’t acceptable behavior, Danny. You can’t just show up in the middle of the night.”

“I’ve been downstairs since I finished my last procedure.” He glances at his ridiculously eighties style digital watch, and mumbles toward his wrist.  “Oh, you know, eight hours ago.”

“My lobby has a bar?”

“Your block has a liquor store,”  He corrects her, propelling himself off the sofa and toward her bookshelf, not quite walking a straight line.

He frowns, contemplating a framed photo of her parents and brother, taken the night of their going away party, and she wonders if he’s making the same connection. She can’t remember the last time they were on the same page, or if they were ever even reading the same book.

“I should have told you how I felt about marriage, and I didn’t.” He says to the picture frame, “I didn’t because I knew that if I had, you wouldn’t have agreed to have this baby with me, and it would have broken us. We’d be broken anyway.”

He turns back around, and from the look on his face, it momentarily appears as if it would have more humane of her to stomp on his actual ribcage than leave him, taking their son with her.

“I used to read to him every night, and it’s been weeks since…it’s been weeks. I just want him to know that no matter what this—“ He waves his hand between them, “Is, I don’t ever question who I am to that baby. I’m his dad, Min. And he needs to have a dad.” She thinks she’s seen him inside out before, maybe, for a few seconds, but tonight, he’s as raw and gaping as an open wound. “He’s never going to wonder when or if I’m going to show up. He’s going to know.”

She notices the books, then, stacked on her coffee table. Dr. Seuss and _Goodnight Moon_ , another title about do it yourself home improvement projects, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, _Learn to Speak Italian in 10 Easy Steps._ “You’re teaching him to speak Italian?”

“Now’s the time, Mindy, when he’s young. His brain, it’s a sponge.” He clasps his hands, his fingers long and graceful, pinching at his own skin uneasily, “I just--I need you to know something. I’m still mad, and I might be for a while. But that doesn’t mean…”

She knows what’s coming, because he’s Danny, it’s his default setting, and it is unfair. “I know, Danny.”

“As long as you know.” He gives her a sad half smile, the one that wrecks her, and she wonders if either of them is capable of just enough change to make this work, if either of them could lean just a bit in either direction, enough to make this relationship functional again, to put it back together whole. “G’night, Mindy.” He sinks to his knees and speaks directly to her navel, “”Night, little buddy.”

She can’t fall asleep, not with the phantom warmth of Danny’s hands across her abdomen, so she reads the book about home improvement aloud to her unborn son and dreams of Danny living in her womb, building plywood shelving.


	3. Chapter 3

Nothing could have prepared her. She'd watched literally thousands of women do it, and she's still blindsided when it happens.

She's been scheduled for prenatal checks every other day for the past couple of weeks, and Morgan's been charting her blood pressure daily. She's had some little ripples of pain over the past couple of days, but with the near constant heartburn she barely notices a little gas anymore. She's just peed in yet another cup, and finds herself completely caught by surprise when her water breaks as she tries to crawl onto the exam table. _How did I miss the signs?_ she thinks as she sends the text Danny's been waiting for then cleans herself up and trundles off to check in properly.

It goes slowly, but surprisingly Danny comes through for her and stops any arguments that she could go home and wait it out for a while before they reach her ears, and she gets a good few hours of texting and TV in before it comes down to business.

For once she's sweating worse than Danny, which would be hilarious if only he'd look at her. He's preoccupied with the things she's pointedly ignoring like the numbers on the sphygmomanometer. He’s supposed to be wiping the sweat away from her brow, not obsessed with liver enzymes. She wants to be mad about it, but she's so tired. And if she's being completely honest, maybe she's tired of being mad too.

She'd never admit it, but having Morgan there is a comfort, a buffer between her and the man who gave her this son she's trying like hell to bring into the world. The man who despite everything is still the center of this world.

The last hour goes by in a matter of seconds, but she finds herself wishing Peter could have stayed in New York just long enough to help with this. The medical things, not Danny things. He would definitely have told her she looked godawful, but he'd never use words like disseminated intravascular coagulation or sphygmomanometer in front of someone with her knees in the air. And he wouldn’t have let Danny get away with this medical facade, made him step away from the machines and hold her hand, be the dad. _He wouldn't have cried like Danny did though_ , she thinks to herself as she recounts Ben's fingers and toes, checks every part of him again.

She reminds herself later when they're home to write it all down in the green baby book for Ben.   Danny Castellano was there for his son.

* * *

 

 

Two OB-GYNs having a baby in the hospital where they practice means a revolving door of every nurse, doctor, orderly and even the two baristas Mindy hasn't yet alienated, leaving Danny and Mindy very little time alone. Even the day they get to Mindy's apartment they find Gwen already folding tiny clothes and Maggie in the kitchen chopping blocks of cheese into sticks and parceling them out into tupperware containers. "Gwen said you won't get time to eat so make you some snacks," she says as she slides the plastic boxes onto a refrigerator shelf.

Danny hovers most of the afternoon, greeting people as they arrive and fumbling to find places to put the little gifts they bear. He doesn't actually know where things belong and for weeks she finds things slightly out of place - gift cards mixed into the mail she never opens, diaper genie refills under the kitchen sink.  Annette drops by with Dot, spending most of the evening cooing over the first grandchild and trying to force homemade lasagne into everyone. Morgan insists on sleeping over that first night, curled on the loveseat in the nursery like a dog attending his master. Again she's grateful for his presence, because it somehow makes Danny staying that night less strange. It's his only use ultimately, because he sleeps like a stone, barely stirring when the baby wakes and those first hiccupy cries ring out.

Danny's already standing over the crib when she gets there. Ben wiggles in his arms, the cry not yet fully fledged, but building. "He's up," Danny whispers.

"I heard." Danny holds the baby out and she takes him carefully, gesturing with a tilt of her chin for Danny to follow. They settle on the sofa, the seat still a bit warm from where Danny lay only moments ago. Danny takes the chair opposite. "I assume you checked him out?"

"He's just hungry." She's never been overly bothered about nudity, and when she pops a couple of buttons on her pajama top Danny looks away and shifts in the chair. "You want me to leave?"

“It's just my wires, Danny.” She's not sure why she says it, but he smiles in response. Maybe they're both too tired to examine what level of humor is appropriate for the first time you see your babymama feed your son, but it hardly matters. She's got a baby to feed and they've both got to figure out how to do this. Today is the first day of the rest of your life and all that.

Danny rubs his eyes and leans back against the seat. “How do you feel?”

“Like an alien?” She stares down at Ben's silky black hair, for the first time noticing how much lighter Ben really is, the contrast obvious with tiny crumpled face pressed to her skin. “Like he's an alien.”

“Huh?” She'd forgotten how often Danny used that syllable to indicate confusion, and how irritating it was. She can tell already how much of her own mother's parenting style she'll carry forward and she doesn't see the word huh in Ben's future. CEOs of Fortune 500s who buy their mothers luxe apartments don't say huh.

“I don't know.” She strokes Ben's cheek with her index finger. He's a good eater. He gets that from her. “My body felt like it belonged to someone else when I was pregnant, but it was doing something. I just got used to it. Now he's burst out of me like a facehugger and-- I miss him? Only he's here. But he's like a little stranger. It's weird.”

“Oh.”

“That's not the half of it. It's like my body is still attached by something I can't see. When he cried a minute ago it was like getting tasered. You know that feeling you get when you see someone else fall? Sort of like that.”

“That is weird.” Danny's voice is so soft she barely hears him over the whoosh of the air conditioner. She'd found herself running it all day since she'd moved into this place, the chill air a wonderful reprieve as she lumbered through in those final weeks, but tonight she’s too cold. Danny's staring at her and she can see his eyes shining in the half light.

She looks away, down at her little alien. “I'm cold, Danny.”

He brushes his eyelashes as he stands. “I'll go adjust the AC.”

Ben’s almost done, but she adjusts her top and switches sides. She hooks the blanket at the end of the sofa with her toe and drags it toward them. The blanket carries with it the faintest scent of Danny, warm and clean and familiar and gone. That part of her life is gone now. She’s trying to shake the blanket out with one hand when she feels his fingers brush against hers. “Let me do that,” he whispers as he leans over them, tucking it around her feet. As always she can feel the heat coming off him in waves. The magnitude of what they’ve done, creating this life, presses down on her. “Thank you Danny.”

“It’s nothing.”

“No, I mean thank you.” She lowers her eyes to her sleeping son. “For him.”

Danny’s adam’s apple bobs, and for a moment she thinks he might speak but he just nods. She’s known him too long and she can feel the words building behind the gesture. Everything she’s ever learned about regret she learned from Danny Castellano, and when he walks into the bathroom and shuts the door the sound cuts right through her, that same stupid sensation that struck her when Ben cried out. Just like watching someone fall.  


	4. Chapter 4

 This is the part they get right.

Jeremy’s surprisingly amenable to the suggestion that she and Danny are scheduled opposite each other because the alternative is telling Danny Castellano that his son is going to be raised by “complete strangers.”

She stays home for 6 weeks, going back to day shifts in the office once she and Ben get the hang of each other. They’re spared a lot of awkwardness by the simple formula of one overscheduled Danny plus one Mindy perfectly ready to hand over their charge to anyone if there’s a chance to catch some sleep. She misses normal sleep more than she misses wine. And sex.

The exact key she’d returned to him not so long ago finds its way back her keyring, but the unspoken agreement that Ben’s main residence is her place shapes their dance and she finds no reason to use it. Not that she’s looking that hard.

She doesn’t hesitate to give Danny a key to her new place, but the first night she returns to find groceries she didn’t buy in the refrigerator and freshly washed and folded onesies stacked on the kitchen table she is struck by the new reality where things that end never really end. This is not leaving someone. This is not being left. This is like being haunted.

She wonders sometimes if Danny's getting what he wants, wonders if he's still angry when he picks up the detritus she leaves in her wake as she blazes through the morning routines. He shouldn't clean up behind her, but she'd never been able to stop him before and it feels even less likely now that they communicate largely by text and hand-offs that closely resemble patient rounds.

She's angry sometimes, and it would be nice to know that he is too.

Mostly though, she's tired. She wouldn't trade anything for the scars she bears for bringing Ben into the world, and even though her body was on its way back to real again she's pretty sure there are some aches and pains that are here to stay. She tries not to think of Ben as the scar she bears for loving Danny, but the exhaustion blurs the lines between conscious and unconscious thoughts now and then. She wants to call and ask her mom if she'd felt this way, but she's terrified the answer is no. Maybe even more so that the answer is yes.

She sees it on Danny too when they pass each other, lines she'd never noticed before suddenly prominent on his face, the silver returning to his hair like frost now that she's not trying to control that part of him. Maybe they'd been bad for each other. Maybe it had just been her way of trying to pretend time wasn’t marching on them, that they could stay in place until they were ready to take that next step together. Of course, she knows now that time does what it will. And that he'd never been ready.

Ben’s starting to lose that alien look, but for as many babies as she’s handled she’s never spent extended periods of time with one, unattended. He stares at her suspiciously, with the deep brown Castellano eyes of judgement, a carbon copy of his father, and she worries that she’s doing this wrong. He’s healthy enough, gaining weight steadily and “crapping like a champ” as Peter so beautifully puts it one night on Skype. How Peter Prentice became a baby guru is a mystery, but she gets random shots of Henry every once in a while and she finds herself texting Pete in the middle of the night sometimes, his profanity laced nuggets of parenting advice surprisingly cogent. But still she spends most nights feeling that she’s forgotten something.

On the nights she feels the weakest, she wonders if it would have been easier to stay with Danny for this part. At least each night she’d have someone to sit down and run the checklist with, someone to point out that Ben’s nails need trimming, or that diaper stock was good but wet wipes were running low. She’d have someone to hold her and tell her they were overwhelmed too.

But she’s okay. She knows she’s okay, because Ben’s okay and because being something other than okay isn’t really an option.

Tamra asks, one night after finding Mindy standing in front of the vending machine with a dollar in her hand and a thousand yard stare. "Aren't you lonely?"

The question itself isn't that surprising, but the source is. She and Tamra aren't close like that, and her knee jerk reaction is to tell Tamra to mind her own business. There's a softness around her eyes though, and the words die on Mindy's tongue.

"I've got Ben," she says.

She struggles to remember how long ago Tamra and Morgan broke up. Mindy had been so wrapped up in Danny at that point that she'd been a little careless with other people's details.

Tamra pushes her out of the way and plunks coins into the machine, selecting Skittles with no more than a cursory glance at the alternatives. “That's not what I mean, and you know it.”

“I miss sex.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Tamra deposits herself on the closest chair and stretches her long legs out. “I've seen what Dr. C's packing under those blue shirts and dad jeans. I'd miss that too.”

“Damnit, Tamra.”

“What? I get why you had to do it, but you and Dr C were the real deal as far as I could see.” She shrugs at Mindy and pops a few pieces of candy into her mouth. “He was like your best friend though. Don't you miss that?”

Again there's something in the way Tamra says it that stops Mindy shooting back something cruel. Morgan and Tamra have both, despite everything, become real forces in her life, and the idea that they'd joined and parted so quickly yet managed to return to some semblance of their former friendship was hard to wrap her mind around. The implication that maybe they hadn't was strangely comforting.

“Best friend isn't a person, Tamra.”

“Yeah, yeah, I've heard your theory, but if I grabbed your phone from you who would be the person in your call list that you call most?”

“Peking Garden. They deliver.”

“At the end of a long day who do you want to call?”

“Anderson Cooper.”

The over-the-top eyeroll that accompanies Tamra's response is irritating, but enviable in its perfect form. “Knock it off Dr. L.”

Mindy feeds her dollar into the machine and jabs at the buttons. “What do you want me to say, Tamra? Yeah, I wish things were different, but they aren't. I'm doing fine though. I have a beautiful, healthy child and he's got two parents who would do anything for him. I am great at my job. And for your information I still have a best friend, he just lives in Texas and has his own family. If I'm a little lonely sometimes it's not a big deal because apparently I can just come to work and have every private aspect of my life picked apart by you guys.”

“How is Dr. P?”

“He's okay. He likes his new practice.”

“I honestly figured he'd be back by now. Dr. That Lady is shady. Seems like the kind to change her mind.”

Mindy tries to remember the last time Peter had mentioned Lauren. Maybe it wasn't being wrapped up in Danny that made her forget to ask people how they are. Maybe she was just like this. She bends down to fish her snack out of the machine. “I haven't asked about her.”

“Yeah, like you never asked about Morgan. You don't talk anymore and it's not good for you. You talk about your baby constantly, but you don't talk about yourself, which is literally all you used to do. I get it that maybe you don't want to start a conversation about your personal shit with Dr. C around, so I'm asking you now.”

“I'm sorry Tamra.” She pops the can of Pringles open and stares into the little tube. She's not really hungry now, but since she's been breastfeeding she seems to burn through calories so she probably needs to eat anyway. She's regretting not getting one of those dumb little pies she loved so much before Ben arrived. “I should have asked about Morgan.”

“Me and Morgan are over for good now. It's taken me a long time to realize that, and I could kick myself for walking away from someone who really cared about me. I know people expected us to fail, I did too. That's probably why I did it.”

Mindy shakes her head. “That's not what happened with Danny.”

“I know that. But I also know that caring for someone doesn't go away overnight and working with them makes it worse.”

Mindy doesn't really have anything to say to that. She shakes the little tube of chips and looks up at Tamra. “Do you want to go get something real to eat?”

Tamra wads up her half finished bag of Skittles and jams them down the side of the chair cushion. “You're paying.”

“Gross, Tamra. We're going to get ants in here.”

“Morgan will find them.”

“Do you feed him?”

“I just leave things for him just in case.”

“Why is he so poor?” Mindy snaps the lid back on the Pringles and hands it to Tamra. “What does he do with his money?”

Tamra wedges the tube down the back of the cushion and waits while Mindy roots around in her bag for her debit card. “That's kind of a long story.”

Mindy nods. “I’m listening.”


	5. Chapter 5

“It’s either this or call Pube and see if my old bedroom is still free.”

Peter's luggage consists largely of Hefty bags, and he's dripping water everywhere, but he is without a doubt the best thing to happen to her all day.

She'd hauled herself out of bed early on her day off to make it out to Staten so Annette could take Ben for the day and “show him off.” Her main plan for the following six hours had featured buying herself a bearclaw on the way home and collapsing with the backlog of Empire waiting on her DVR. Instead, they'd been shooed away by Dot because Annette was having another of her headaches. The doctor in Mindy wanted to push her way in and check everything out because it was a pretty sure bet that Annette hadn't been taking her hypertension medications, but that wasn't her place. She wasn't really sure what her place was anymore.

The dreams of pastries and quiet binge watching had died on the way back to Manhattan when the iffy flurries turned into steady snow. At least she had fought her original impulse to take Ben to Mass just so she could say she'd tried. It wouldn't have stopped the phone conversation she'd had with Danny after she'd already made it home from getting ugly anyway.

She tries so hard not to let these shitty little fights they have a least once a week get under her skin; they're so rarely about what they're about and almost always about Danny's fear of failing at fatherhood. Which still feels like her fault some days.

But here stands Peter Prentice, and it's so good to see his face for the first time in months that it makes her chest ache. A million things she's been wanting to say out loud to another adult line up behind the lump in her throat and she almost chokes on his name. “Peter!”

If he's willing to contemplate opening up the can of worms that is Unrequited Pube, then whatever brought him to her door on a Sunday night must be bad news. She stands aside so he can come in and tries for something funny because she's afraid anything else at this moment might open up the floodgates.

“Are your people allowed to move house on the Sabbath?”

“That was yesterday.” He steps back into the hallway, and hefts his crappy overstuffed green gymbag onto his shoulder and smiles. “And I think you'll find Jews are pretty practical these days when it comes to hightailing it out of dicey situations.”

“Oh God, Peter.”

“You got anything to drink?”

 

* * *

 

 

She leaves Peter with his trash bags and fresh towels in the guest room, and makes the call to Peking Garden. Danny for some reason has never once used the room no matter how late he stays and it's more or less pristine; Peter makes it look like his own in less than 20 minutes. She sneaks past the room quietly to check on Ben, and the sight of Peter's clothes thrown haphazardly in the dresser, the drawers still out, feels strangely right. As he put it once upon a time, family just shows up, like HPV.

By the time he wanders into the kitchen with his hair in damp curls and a Dartmouth tee that's more holes than shirt, she's fed Ben, changed clothes after a little burping mishap, and started putting down plates. “Any better?” she asks cautiously.

“Like a whole new man.” His smile doesn't quite make it to his eyes.

She hands him a bottle of champagne.

“Sorry, this is all I've got. I didn't buy anything when I moved because of the whole pregnant thing and now all I've got is a case of Moet someone brought as a gift when we came home from the hospital.”

It doesn't feel like it's going to be a champagne occasion, but he's already peeling the foil away from the top, and the buzz of the intercom stops her saying anything else. She just lets him get at it as she traipses off to buzz up the delivery guy.

“You want some?” he shouts from behind her as she gathers the bags and hurries back to to stop him before he shouts something else.

“Shhhh! If you wake that baby up you better be able to lactate because you're putting him back to sleep.”

“Sorry. You want some?”

She puts the bags on the counter and starts unpacking. “No, I think one of us needs to stay sober tonight.”

“Your funeral.” Peter shrugs and takes a swig directly from the bottle.

“Slow down, cowboy. How about you line your stomach.” She tips a box of beef lo mein his way. He makes a face and puts the champagne down.

"Funny you should say that, I think it might have been a cowboy.” He peers into the open carton and grabs a pair of chopsticks.

“Peter,” she begins but he turns away and takes his noodles to the sofa.

“Hey you get Skin-emax?” The carton lays abandoned on the table as Peter flips through the cable menu. The bottle is almost empty now.

“Damnit Peter, I'm not going to watch softcore porn with you while you drink yourself sick.” She follows him into the living room, placing a plate full of egg rolls on the coffee table before sitting.

“You got any real porn? Tom said you guys taped a bunch more...”

She punches him hard on the bicep. “Act normal.”

“This is normal for me.”

“No it is not.” She watches him tip the end of the bottle down his throat. “What the hell happened, Peter?”

“You know my rule, starts to go south you cut 'em loose.” His lips form a grim little line now, not exactly a frown, but an expression unmistakable in its misery.

“Bull shit.”

“What do you want me to say, Min? I knew when I married her that my number would come up some day when she met someone more British or “less clingy” or whatever. I knew it, and I married her anyway and now she's living a Big and Rich song and I should have read that prenup more carefully.”

“Wait, what?”

“Nevermind. Texas really is like a whole other country.”

“Well, you're in Manhattan, bub. Everything can go back to normal now.”

“I don't want it to go back to normal.”

“Oh.”

“I want my life back.” She catches a little flash of something behind his sea green eyes, something recognizable like regret, and a little like relief too. He turns back to the TV and flips through the DVR. “Wanna watch Empire?”

“Sure,” she replies. The egg rolls are still warm and she settles in next to him, suddenly reminded of the nights they'd spent on Danny's sofa watching reality tv and sneaking the rest of Danny's “cookies” (graham crackers, damn him) while Danny slept. She'd thought back then that Peter hadn't figured out how to be a grown up yet, but as she leans her head on her best friend's shoulder she knows that neither of them had known what it meant to be a grown up then. Maybe they don't know now.

She thinks about what he said to her, that you’re allowed to want to change your life. They both changed their life, but it turns out you don’t get to control what it changes into.


	6. Chapter 6

She thinks sometimes how often during the times she’s been waiting--whether for Ben to arrive  before his due date, or for him to sleep through the night--she’s really just been wishing for time to speed up.  And how now, it seems more like she’s willing time to stop, to make the firsts come less quickly, because of how new and terrifying and real everything’s become.

Danny’s already texted four different times since she’s been in the waiting room of the pediatrician’s office, each message progressively more hostile at her lack of immediate response.

She can’t answer any of his texts because she’s been too busy shielding Ben’s pumpkin seat from what appears to be armies of sniveling brats that seem more than intent on infecting her perfectly healthy newborn.  One particular blonde girl of three or four, who on a normal day would be a miniature style icon for Mindy’s future daughter, approaches Ben’s carrier on two separate occasions and wipes her clearly runny nose on the back of her hand as she peers at the sleeping baby.  “He’s so pretty.  Can I touch him?”

It takes all of Mindy’s strength not to clothesline a small child with her free arm.  She’s read plenty about the maternal instinct, but nothing’s adequately prepared her for developing the maternal instinct of a grizzly bear.  And she can’t fathom why this doctor’s office doesn’t have a VIP waiting area, so that she doesn’t have to subject her child to whatever flesh eating bacteria the rest of this crowd is harboring.

“Benjamin?”  A nurse that wears Snoopy-print scrubs appears from behind the reception desk, and Mindy feels the tension in her shoulders as she hoists the twenty-five pounds of baby and seat into the air.  There’s a half a second when she thinks that it should be Danny doing the heavy lifting, but she knows that he would be, if he could. And then there’s the other half second where she resents the hell out of him, because he isn’t.

Danny has seemed off for weeks, maybe even dating back to Peter’s arrival back in town.  It was little things, comments he’d make under his breath, little snappy retorts when Peter would drop by the office to casually visit, but they were starting to add up to a strange irritation that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.  

Ben’s head droops onto his chest as he sleeps, his neck still fitful and rubbery. And now thanks to Danny’s constant barrage of helpful emails, she takes it as a personal affront that her son’s neck has not developed fully.  It doesn’t help that she’s already putting Ben through some sort of Chinese water torture that Danny calls tummy time, and the main result seems to be Ben splaying all of his limbs out helplessly, his forehead flush against the blanket.  

His tiny face deepens with angry wrinkles as Mindy undresses him per the nurse’s request, and the high-pitched bleating (she knows, with a determined resignation, that the pitch of his cries is the direct result of her genetic material, maybe the one thing he possesses that noticeably came from her) doesn’t end as they wait in the tiny, stuffy office for the nurse to reappear and escort them to the scale.  

Mindy sways Ben from side to side, making an elaborate sweep and dipping motion with her hips.  She watches Danny do it to settle the baby regularly, and though she pictures it as some military grade calisthenic exercise, she realizes that Danny probably picked it up along the way in one of his dance classes.  Leave it to motherhood to make her a more adequate dancer.

Dr. Glick is a competent and experienced pediatrician, with kind green eyes and freckles bridging her nose, and she patiently details feedings and developmental milestones in elaborately graphic drawings and charts, but Mindy doesn’t hear anything she says after the word _immunizations_.  

“Can we just—would you mind if I took a minute here?  His father thought he might be able to get away from his last procedure after all, and I just need to check---“

Dr. Glick smiles, clicking the electronic health record on the desktop closed.  Mindy swears she hears pity in the doctor’s tone.  “Of course, Mindy.”

Settling Ben back into his carrier, Mindy scrolls through Danny’s series of texts, none of which indicate that he has been able to rearrange his schedule to attend today’s appointment, so she hits the first number on her speed-dial.

“Bro B. G.Y.N., at your service.”

“I don’t care where you are, what you’re doing, or  if you’re wearing those creepy sweatpants with the Game Cocks logo on them, but I need you to get your ass down to Dr. Glick’s office.”  She hisses into the phone, while still smiling a little manically at the baby. Sometimes she worries that Ben pictures her as an oversized squeaky clown toy with nutritional value.

Peter’s voice goes lower and serious, “Is everything okay?”

She doesn’t feel the tears until they emerge, but she manages to choke out, “Shots,” before she gets too hysterical to form coherent sentences.

“I’ll be there in five.”  

Still only in his diaper, Mindy gathers Ben into her arms, his warm, velvety head tucked under the tent of her chin.  It wasn’t that many days before that she’d told Danny how that’s her favorite part of holding the baby, the heat of his infant head on her skin feeling more like home than anything else.  She didn’t tell Danny that she wonders if Ben feels the same; that she has actual, tangible doubts sometimes that he does.  

“Okay, Ben, Mommy needs to make one thing clear to you.  What’s about to happen, it’s going to suck.  Neither of us is going to like it.  But we live in a first world country, and we have access to a lot of awesome things, one of those being vaccines.  They prevent a lot of horrible diseases and save a lot of young lives.  But there’s only one way to get that done.  And it’s a doozy.  So just remember, I didn’t like this either.”

Peter arrives in not much more time than promised, and Mindy gratefully notes a lack of phallic references on his clothing.  “Who’s down for a shots off?”  From the dour expression on Mindy’s face, he changes course. “J.K. J.K.  We will not do a shots off with my sober buddy, Ben.”

“Danny can’t get away, and they’re going to…”

“I got it, I got it.  We’re gonna bear down here, kids.  Pete Pete is not gonna let Benz-Bro-Diazapene get vaccinated without a little loving from Brown Bear.”  He extracts the stuffed animal out of Mindy’s overflowing diaper bag, “And of course, a manly fist pound of solidarity.”

She’s sure it’s gas, but Ben’s mouth widens into a smile at Peter’s arrival, his puppy brown eyes following the new voice.  She’s seen some flicks and starts of baby grins, but it’s the first that seems purposeful, and it’s entirely possible that she’s never seen anything more beautiful.  

The nurse knocks on the door and re-enters, her supplies clutched in both hands.  The sight of the hypodermics is enough to make Mindy’s stomach curdle.  

“You know what?  Maybe Jenny McCarthy was right.”  

“C’mon, Mindy, he’s gonna be fine.  Vag up.”

“You vag up.  This is my baby we’re about to stab.”

“Shh, don’t say stab in front of Benjamin Broseph.  Use calming sounds.  Henry always liked it when I did this real low kind of ho ho ho thing.”  He demonstrates, a more stoned version of Santa Claus.  But as ridiculous as he looks and sounds, it also relaxes the baby.  And Mindy.

The nurse goes about her task deftly, as Mindy and Peter hold Ben to the crisp white paper of the exam table.  She’s quick with her work, but it doesn’t prevent Ben’s wounded howling from searing Mindy beneath her skin.  Ben glares up at her, then, his eyebrows knit together as he noisily voices his disdain for her clear dereliction of duty.  

The nurse nods to Peter, ho ho ho-ing as fast as he can.  “You’ve got your hands full there, Dad.”  

Peter looks at Mindy, then down at the baby, and back, unnerved.  “Yeah, I really do.”  

The nurse leaves, and Mindy gapes open-mouthed at her newly appointed co-parent.  “But.”

He waves her off, collecting Ben’s things from the table.  “It didn’t seem worth the long explanation.  It’s not like we just finalized the adoption, calm down.”

“But you can’t just do that.  You can’t just be Ben’s dad.”  She pokes a fingernail into his rib cage, and it sort of sinks.  On Danny, it would have bounced back, pointedly.

“Again.  To repeat:  I just wanted to get the stranger out of the room so my friend could berate me in private.  Although in my defense, I thought my friend would be thanking me.”

It rushes through her, a cold fist, and she feels badly about the hurt she’s clearly caused. “I’m sorry, Peter.  It just took me by surprise is all.”

“Me too!  But I wasn’t going to throw a wobbler about it.”  He flicks Ben’s carrier onto the crook of his elbow, and turns back to her. “Don’t act like you haven’t thought about it before, either.”  He winks at her, and she knows that he’s just teasing.  She thinks.  

And when Danny’s number appears on her vibrating phone a few minutes later, she can’t pretend that she doesn’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt as she presses _Ignore_.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Maybe it’s the years of hospital work that have prepared her for where she is now:  a milk-laden zombie whose sleep pattern depends solely on a tiny mutant genetic wonder.  Ben’s finally getting to a point where he can go almost six hours between feedings, and the extra REM cycle starts to feel like flying.  She’s finally dreaming again, both vivid and gauzy, lately involving David Beckham and harvesting strawberries, and aside from Ben’s new dazzlingly gummy smiles, they might be what she looks forward to most.  

She doesn’t remember having a landline installed in her new place, but those few weeks are a blur anyway, and she must have, because here it is, like a foghorn, and David freaking Beckham is nowhere to be found.

Over Ben’s squalling, because of course, he too was dreaming of something better than a ringing telephone, Danny’s voice is tight, distant and strange.  “My mom.”

It’s all he says for a good few seconds, and Mindy reigns in her annoyance long enough to sway and bob with the baby, as his blinking gradually slows and his crying subsides.  “Wait. What?”

“Dot found her, after church.  They think it could have been a stroke.”

“Danny.”  Ben sucks in his lower lip, his eyelids fluttering, and she strokes his cheek with her thumb.  It’s probably more soothing to her than it is to him.

“I don’t think it’s a great idea for me to pick up Ben in the morning.  They’re still running tests, there’s just a lot...Give him a kiss for me, okay?  I’ll be there as soon as I can.”   Her alarm clock reads 4:35 a.m. and she wonders how long it took him to decide to call; if his hand hovered over the send button for longer than necessary.  He didn’t need to hover.

“I’m so, so sorry.  I know what she means to you.”

He’s silent again, until he releases a ragged sigh.  “She’s my girl, Min.”  And on another day, that statement would have rankled her, but she’s starting to understand it now, almost accept it, how a mother’s love is a constant, and how deeply Danny has always depended on that to get through.  

“What do you need me to do? I can drop Ben off with Morgan and--”

“No, I don’t want you down here.”  

She should be used to it by now, how quickly the chill can creep back in, how easily he can cut her out.  “You need people.”

“Please.  Just get Ben back to sleep.  I’m sorry I woke you.”

If this were just months ago, she’d tell him he was acting like a jerk and call a cab in the same breath.  But this is now.  “I hope she’s okay, Danny.  Get some rest.”

Try as she might, Mindy can’t lure David Beckham back into her bed to feed her any more fruit out of season, and she can’t stop worrying that Danny is going to go through all of this alone.

* * *

 

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one, Father. A priest, a Hindu and a Jew walk into a cathedral, and they baptize Danny Castellano’s baby—without him!“ She jabs Peter swiftly with her elbow, only satisfied when she elicits a groan loud enough to startle the front pew, “Am I right, Padre?”

Mindy shoots Peter a look that could melt glass as Ben squirms and squawks in her arms, clearly uncomfortable in his baptismal gown, the white satin causing him to more closely resembling a tiny infant bride than a bouncing baby boy. But the saleswoman assured her this was an exact replica of the gown that Prince George wore to his royal christening, and that was all she needed to know.  She can still hear Danny’s grumbling as he wrote out the check, grousing about college tuition and priorities, but it was his own fault for still writing checks.  He’d have complained less if he’d just handed over his credit card.

And anyway, Mindy wishes that she just would have let Danny reschedule this whole debacle, for a time when the whole family could be there. But he was so insistent on the time frame, even after Annette's transient ischemic attack, she couldn't bring herself to argue. Weighing it against sitting through yet another long-winded ramble about original sin and no son of his (honestly, she’s heard enough Sunday homilies with Danny to be a little concerned about it on her own, too), and add that to Danny's stress over his hospitalized mother, she's following the plan as originally intended.  

The sanctuary is lined with the usual suspects:  Morgan, who converted to Catholicism the moment he found out she was pregnant for just this very purpose; Dot, the only female Catholic she knows outside of the Castellanos (who actually threatened physical bodily harm to earn the mantle of godmother); and Peter, Danny’s official stand in.

And then there’s her precious son, who has no idea the world of guilt and shame and perpetual genuflecting into which he’s just been thrust, giggling happily as the priest anoints him with chrism.

 

* * *

 

 

Sometimes when she squints, she can see the possibility in Danny again; she almost remembers what it was like to see possibility in Danny in the first place.

He’s getting older, crankier, more set in his ways; more of all the things that she always thought he’d outgrow, if she’d just stuck it out. She couldn’t keep him, and she couldn’t throw him away, and what she has now is the equivalent of sitting on his lawn, watching him eat dinner with his family through a picture window. Everything looks put together and well-kempt, and she’ll always be on the outside.

Up close there are lines around his eyes, when he comes to pick up Ben, and his lips turn down in a tiny, almost imperceptible frown. She never looks out the peephole to identify him anymore; one, because he always knocks _shave and a haircut, two bits_ because he is EIGHTY, and two, viewing him in that tiny circle tugs at her chest with an odd fierceness, one that becomes progressively easier to recover from each time she sees him.

Mostly because she can’t quite shake the feeling that he’s actually on the right side of the door.

 

It’s easier sometimes, pretending that Ben was delivered by a gossamer white stork and deposited on her doorstep, and that he wasn’t created by two people in love who got really turned on by year end fiscal reports and plastic novelty glasses.  Because she’s tied to Ben’s father, irrevocably, whether or not vows were ever said.


	8. Chapter 8

She finds Danny in Annette’s hospital room, crossword puzzle sitting half done on his knee, reading glasses untouched on the bedside tray.  “Did someone order a Strip-O-Gram?”

His head jerks up, “What the hell, Mindy.”

She wishes she would have accepted the drink that Peter offered her as she was walking out the door, that she had some kind of cushion beneath her.  Stress is not a situation in which Danny Castellano becomes his best self, and she understands that probably better than she’d like.  But his reaction to her arrival doesn’t smart any less with the knowledge.  

“I thought you might need some dinner that didn’t come out of a warming tray.” She tosses pizza box and two bottles of hospital contraband beer on the table, and rolls it in front of him, a peace offering. “I got you some slices. It’s crust city. Just the way you like it. How’s our girl?”

“No change.” His eyes are deep hollows, made concave by lack of sleep and worry. A coffee stain marks the cuff of his shirt, on the inch that escapes from his soft wool sweater. She knows that stain means he isn’t okay, that something is keeping him from his usual attention to detail, and it burns a little, deep in her gut.  She almost reaches out to hug him, her arms stiffening and then dropping quickly by her side.  He rubs at his eyes, raking his hand down his face. “They’re doing everything they can. It just isn’t—it isn’t helping right now.”

He doesn’t move to touch the food or the beer, even as the garlicky scent wafts into the room.

“You need to get out of here, man. You’re molding to the chair.” She tugs on his hand, hoping to not have to confront the sight of the frail Annette. “Let’s take a walk.  I’ll tell you all about the baptism, and how Peter almost stole the big gold pimp cup.”

“It’s a chalice, you heathens.”

She wants to pout, but he’s exhausted and worried, and it was more of a you-had-to-be-there story anyway.  “It was just a joke, Danny.  Chill.”

The cross look only half dissipates.  “You don’t have to do this. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. Stop pretending to be fine.”  She isn’t sure what compelled her to wear this dress tonight, the one that has what Danny used to call the pornographic zipper.  She’s tired of wearing things that strain against her new breasts, but something told her she needed to work with them instead of against them tonight.

Mindy slides her hand all the way into his palm, this time pulling more forcefully, and he snaps her back, causing her to topple into his lap. It’s a familiar position, the ease with which she fits, and yet, somehow foreign territory.  She should move, but that would admit some kind of karmic defeat.  He doesn’t push her off, so maybe he’s doing the same thing.

Up close, his eyes are bloodshot, jumbled with exhaustion, but he still smells like Danny, like shaving cream and something crisp, clean.   

The zipper of her dress quivers directly underneath his chin, and if this was a different circumstance, maybe he’d reach for it.  Maybe she’d reach for it first.  “Stop pretending.”

“No one is pretending. Just—You don’t need to do this. I’ve got it under control.”

“Where’s Richie?”

“He had to go back to Florida. He just got that job, he can’t afford the time off.”  He’s talking into her chest as if she’s a drive through speaker, and the outline of his nose, the curve of his jaw reminds her so much of Ben’s it’s like a gunshot between the eyes.

“Dot?”

“Jury duty.”

An impasse.  He tips his head up and they stare at each other for a few seconds, not speaking, until she realizes how aggressively she’s holding his gaze. Or that he’s actually holding hers back.  “I know you want to take care of her, Danny, I know, but you have to take care of you, too.”

“That’s my Mom, Mindy, I’m not leaving her.”

There isn’t a minute that goes by that she doesn’t remember how stubborn, how immovable he can really be.  And maybe she can’t move him, not anymore, but she can still help.  She drums her fingers on the knob of his spine, and digs her fingertips into a knot she finds there. “I know.”

Surprisingly, Danny allows the action, and drops his head forward, rolling it around his shoulders. “Oh, right there.” He emits a low growl, and Mindy stands again, still working her hands around the tension of his muscles. He speaks into his own chest as she works,  “They just have no idea what they’re doing. They keep sending interns, the resident is twelve and I think he just grew into his arms…”

“You know what they say: doctors make the worst patients’…sons.”

He looks up at her quizzically, his eyebrow a question mark.

“Eh, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t look any more convinced than he did a few minutes before, and she isn’t quite sure what to do next.  She’s not used to that yet, the fact that comfort has faded back into formality, and that she can’t just make him bend to her will anymore.  If she ever really could.

“At least let me get you a change of clothes, Danny. You could take a shower here, get cleaned up…”  She’s seen how his nightly rituals comfort him, laying out and then accomplishing the simple tasks, maybe if she could just help him gain a bit of peace, he’d stop looking so haunted.  

He shrugs, possibly more out of a desire to curb the onslaught of helpful suggestions. “Okay, thank you.”   Danny looks down at his mother, patting at her arm, pushing a piece of hair back against her forehead, and then back to Mindy, “It’s different now, so don’t be…surprised.”

She doesn’t ask to what he’s referring, because really, it’s all different now, and she’s not allowed to be surprised, because they were all her choices. “Okay.”

It almost slaps her in the face, how the door to apartment 85 no longer exists, the hallway weirdly smooth after Danny’s doorway. Peter’s been handling some of the drop-offs, and Danny usually comes to her place, so Mindy can’t remember the last time she stood in this spot, or turned a key in this lock.

If she ever lived here, there is no evidence. Her throw pillows, the pink bathroom hand towels, tiny ceramic vases they’d found on weekend errands: all gone. The leather sofas, the dining table, the artwork have all been traded for sleeker, newer versions. The adjoining wall of the two apartments has vanished; opening the space into a giant play area, nursery, and what she assumes is a guest room. The apartment smells like new wood varnish, fresh paint, and a life she doesn’t remember having.

She finds Danny’s things in all the places that she’ll know they’ll be; he can’t change everything all at once, it isn’t like him. She gathers his underwear from the top dresser drawer, his shaving kit from under the sink in the bathroom, and stops short when she gets to the closet.

Her memory isn’t so warped that she doesn’t remember this closet once being small, and cramped, and that her boyfriend once lovingly converted it to hold her things, even the most nonsensical of them. The formerly walk-in closet has reverted back to its original size and contents, and this apartment is officially a place she has never lived.

* * *

 

 

Danny is exactly where she left him; his head tilted back, eyes closed. The pizza box and beers empty and discarded in the waste can, the carcass of an orange peel abandoned as well, the room a not unpleasant mixture of citrus and garlic. Careful not to wake him, she lightly deposits his belongings at the doorway, tiptoeing over to drop his key on the table.

She startles when his hand wraps around her forearm. She reads, just in the stiffness of his grasp, the warmth of his fingers against her skin, _come home, I can’t do this alone_. But instead his mouth says, “Mix the pears into the rice cereal, he likes that better,” his voice still hoarse from sleep.

“Peter has Ben. I’ll stay. Keep you company.”

He shakes his head.

“Let me stay.”

 _“I wish you would have.”_ She swears that’s what she heard, but when she glances back at his face, she knows she must be imagining it. She has to be. “No, really, it’s okay. Get back to Ben. He should always have at least one of us.  We made a deal.”

She doesn’t move though, because Danny has a tendency to forget that he doesn’t always make the best decisions for himself, and instead, sits down next to him. She reaches over to take his hand, threading her fingers through his, surprised at the ease with which he accepts her gesture.

Everything after their breakup had been so much quieter than she’d expected. Their volatility had a shelf-life, and apparently, it expired when Mindy and Danny, the couple, had.

“My Ma, she always used to say, this too shall pass, like it was her mantra. After my dad left, or when Christina cheated, or when you…” He addresses the equipment, as if the respirator had taken leave of their relationship, “She’d say it, and I’d believe her, because it was better if I did. It always felt better.”  

Their chairs are close enough that he briefly drops his head to her shoulder, in a rare moment of vulnerability, and her sense memory rockets into overdrive.

(A late night movie, a shared blanket, her almost boyfriend snoring softly next to her.)

Her lungs constrict at the thought of it, and she gently pushes his head upright as he squeezes her hand and drops it. “Thanks, Min.”

“I just---I didn’t know you’d changed so much at the old place.”  She says it before she can re-think it, and she almost grabs at the air to retrieve her statement.

“Oh yeah, what did you think?” He asks, feigning an innocence that still manages to make her feel partially homicidal.  Things aren’t that different, after all.

“It was fine.” She says, evenly. _I will not fall into your trap, Danny Castellano._

He raises his eyebrow, “Really? Fine?”

“It’s fine.”  She smooths her skirt and tries to cultivate an air of nonchalance instead of going with her first instinct which might also include throttling the father of her child.  

“See? I told you. Fine is a thing that adults should say when they just don’t want to get into it.”  

Danny always told her that she gave away too much private information--that the clerk at Neiman Marcus didn’t need to know that they’d had a fight about what underwear to buy for him, and that the waiter at Le Cirque didn’t really care how her day had been. _Just say Fine, Min_.  

Today, she could do him this favor.  “Fine.”


	9. Chapter 9

“How's he holdin' up?!” Peter hands her some sort of drink that looks like a milkshake and smells like tanning lotion before she's even kicked off her shoes.

She sniffs the drink experimentally and eyes up the mostly empty glass in his hand. “Are you drinking? Where's my baby?”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Relax, Tiger mom.”

“No racism tonight please, Peter.” The first sip is cold enough to hurt her teeth.

“Sorry. You know what I mean. Ben's out. He's been out for ages. That kid cannot hold his liquor.”

“Peter!”

“I kid. I kid! Cheers.” He thrusts his glass at hers, the plastic impact is a bit more of a thunk sound than a clink, but she'd slowly given in to his strange affinity for serving drinks out of plastic partyware. It was kind of novel to live with someone who actually bought paper umbrellas and swizzle sticks with translucent sea life as though they were going to throw a luau any night of the week. “He's easy. You feed him, wait for the farting to die down, and he's good for the night. He's basically you.”

“Hey, you live here rent free, buddy. I could kick you out at any time.”

“If you kicked me out who would watch your baby when you had to go pitybang your ex?”

Mindy's jaw drops. “Hey! I did no such thing.”

“Oh.” His smile is strangely brittle and his eyes a little glassy. Maybe he's a little drunker than she thought. God help him if he's been smoking pot while he's supposed to be watching Ben.

“Are you high?”

“What? No! I don't do that anymore. And I wouldn't do that when I'm in charge of Big Ben.”

“Did you really think I had sex with Danny tonight?”

“I don't know.” Peter shrugs and empties his glass. “I mean, you got all dressed up. You were gone for ages.”

“I stopped by his place and picked up clothes for him. Did you know about the... everything?”

“Yeah. It looks pretty good I think.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“What were you gonna do? Break in and re-redecorate?”

“No.” She stares into her almost empty glass. “It was a surprise. I lived with him for months and it's like he just erased every trace of me the second I left.”

“Nah.”

“He did, Peter.”

“Can you blame him?”

“Maybe not.” She forgets sometimes that he's really the other side of this issue, the left, not the leaver. “It just makes me feel like I was some sort of awful mistake he had to erase.”

“You're not a mistake. And besides, he can't really erase you. He's got a little piece of you farting up his apartment every couple of nights.”

“Thank you so much for that.” She tips plastic cup up and lets the last few drops trickle down her throat. “What's in these?”

“Mostly Malibu rum. Plus some white rum. A lot of rum. Rum’s a funny word.”

“Ohh-kay.” She stretches her neck a little, rolling her head from side to side as the tension begins to seep away. She’d forgotten how nice a good buzz could be. “God, it's been so long since I've gotten drunk. I don't think it'll take much.”

“More for me.”

“Just keep 'em coming. Gotta earn your keep. Why haven't you looked for another place?”

He stands and makes his way over to the breakfast bar, pouring an extra measure of liquor in the bottom of the glass before topping it with the mixture from the blender. “I don't know. I guess I got used to it, living in a house with a real family in it.”

“I don't think me and my love child really count as a real family.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. I grew up in one of those really happy nuclear families. I guess I always thought I'd end up like that. A mom and a dad. That kind of thing.”

Peter hands her the second drink and stares critically at her before sitting next to her on the sofa. “You could have stayed with him. He'd have come around to the marriage thing.”

“Maybe. But I didn't want to. I don't want someone to marry me just to humor me. I want them to want me.” She looks at her hands. A ring shouldn't matter, but even now it does. “He got his baby, and he scrubbed me out of his life.”

Her eyes settle on Peter's hands. The question has been on the tip of her tongue for so many weeks now, why he still wears a ring given to him a woman who threw him away. Twice. She wonders briefly if Danny would still wear a ring if it had been them, if they'd gotten as far as the ill-advised wedding before she decided she couldn't live the rest of her life as half measure and a consolation prize of sorts. “It wasn't me. He didn't want me.”

“He did want you. He was basically obsessed with you.”

She feels it right in the pit of her stomach. She can see Danny's face right in front of her own, not the haunted thing she saw tonight, but the guy whose eyes could burn right through you, evaporate the words directly off your tongue, and it hurts so fucking bad the world blurs for a second. “So? You were obsessed with Lauren and look how that turned out.”

His face falls, and she hears the words bounce back at her from every surface in the room. “Oh Pete, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I told you I'd get drunk too easy.”

“It's fine.”

“It's not fine. It was awful. Danny used to do that when I said something that hurt him, he'd come back with something really cruel and I hated it. Like, literally the night I left him he said "I hope that when you explain this to our son, you explain to him that this wasn’t my choice. You ruined his life."”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah, whoa.” She puts her glass down. “Anyway, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”

“You're not wrong. I messed that one up.”

“Hey, no. These things are never just one-sided. Whatever it was couldn't have been all you. I mean, you really stepped up. You tried. Anyone could see that. It kind of gives me hope one day someone will look at me and Ben and our situation and not immediately turn and run.”

“Hey, no one could look at you guys and run.” His palm is warm where it covers her hand, but the tips of his fingers cool from the blended drink. She wonders if forgiveness can be transmitted skin to skin, and if she could learn how to do that trick. He looks so sincere. Maybe she just needs to learn sincerity. “Can I tell you something?”

“Sure.”

He pulls his hand away and it breaks the spell a little. _Double rum makes you dumb_ she thinks, but suppresses the giggle that follows the thought.

“I think maybe I knew Lauren and I weren't gonna work out. Before the wedding. Maybe before I went to Texas.”

“Oh. Why'd you do it then?”

“They needed me. I didn't come from one of those nuclear families. I mean my parents stayed together, but they were pretty hands off. I think that's why I got so into my frat, I've always wanted a family that fit me. Lauren and Henry fit. I know people look at me and see some big screw up, but I was really good at the dad thing.”

“I can see that. You're awesome with Ben.”

“Yeah, I am.” He grins at her and she finds herself smiling back.

“I mean it, Pete. You're like the baby whisperer.”

“Thanks.” He looks genuinely touched and she impulsively leans forward and kisses him, just a gentle kiss to the cheek, but he turns a little and their lips brush as she pulls away.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean--” and he's caught her lips in another quick kiss. It's not friendly anymore, but it's not real either. She feels like she's 17 again and kissing someone without knowing how to kiss them, and not sure if she wanted to kiss them, or if she just wants to be kissed.

“I did mean it,” he says and then suddenly everything tastes of rum and the strangeness of kissing her best friend is far outstripped by how cold his lips are and how it feels like she's somehow at a remove from what's really happening. Then his hands find her breasts and the out-of-body experience ends. She pushes him away.

“Ow! Pete, wait.”

“What?” He looks so strange with her lipstick smeared across his face. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, it's just my boobs are kind of oversensitive.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

“It's fine. I mean, maybe it's good. I don't think... I mean this isn't a good idea.”

“What? Why not?”

“What do you mean, why not? I spent my evening comforting the father of my child, whose life is on spin cycle which somehow means mine is too. It was the closest thing I've had to a date in months and if he'd seemed even half interested I would almost definitely would have come home with my panties in my purse. You spent the evening drinking to forget the collapse of your very recent marriage. You're not ready to do this. I'm not ready to do this. We can't just fall into bed because we got a little drunk and maudlin.”

“Whoa, who said anything about sex?”

“Oh my god.”

The full magnitude of her desperation, and what she had been contemplating and how ridiculous and cliché her life has become comes crashing down. “Oh god. I just assumed that's what you were after. I know you've always been handsy and I should have known this was just a friendly fumble. I'm just going to go to my bedroom and die of embarrassment now.” She starts to stand and he catches her hand.

“I just meant... I know I'm not ready. But this isn't a friend thing or a sad and lonely thing, it's something I've wanted for a while.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I thought you knew that.”

“How could I have possibly known that?”

“I've always liked you. You always had this weird thing with Danny, though. And now you've got a baby with him, and it seems like maybe you still think you should figure it out, but it was different tonight. Then you kissed me and I went for it.”

“I didn't kiss you.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Okay, I did, but that doesn't mean I-”

“Tell me you've never thought about it.”

“Of course I've thought about it.”

“And?”

“And what? Pete, you are still wearing your wedding ring.”

He looks at his hand and back at her. “Oh.”

“I think we should both go sleep off the rum and forget about this.”

“What if I don't want to forget?”

“You don't have to, but I can't be a consolation prize again.”

“Danny really messed you up.”

“And Lauren really messed you up. We're too messed up for whatever this is. “

“Maybe we're just the right amount of messed up.”

“I don't know what that means.” Mindy pulls herself up off the sofa and smooths her dress down. “I'm going to bed.”

“Fine, but I want you to know I'm not forgetting this. You aren't a consolation prize.” His eyes are so intense that for the first time since Danny she feels something a little like hope stir. “For what it's worth you didn't ruin Ben's life. He's lucky to have a mom like you.”

“Thanks.” She looks around the room and for the first time sees how embedded Peter has become in their lives, and the strange part is just how easy it's been. He's never made her feel like she had to fight for a position in his life.

“And for what it's worth, Lauren messed up. You're a good man.”

“Thanks.”

“Goodnight, Pete,” she says quietly as she turns the handle to her bedroom door. She doesn't hear a reply, but pulls the door shut behind her and flops onto the bed.

“Crap,” she whispers to absolutely no one at all.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Mindy nurses Ben in the dim blue light of her Netflix queue most nights, because that feels less isolated.  Maybe sometimes her lack of contiguous hours slept is related more to catching the end of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode she’s been sucked into than Ben’s fussiness, post-midnight feeding.  It’s pretty impressive really, the amount of things you can blame on lack of sleep, the things you can say to people and just get excused on account of exhaustion.  Except for loneliness.  And maybe even then.

Because something almost happened with Peter, something that felt dangerous and right somehow, and then just as quickly, it was neither.  Or both.  The whole thing was really more complex than her motherhood addled brain was willing to contend with, but it just seemed possible that Peter could have been a victim of proximity rather than lust.  Maybe.

It’s Beverly, of all people, who shoves a flier for single parent speed dating under her nose in the break room, and smiles coyly.  “This ain’t no Parent Trap situation, Dr. L.  I had one of those once, and I wouldn’t wish it on a monkey on a rock.”  

She’d like to hear Beverly’s story more than she wants to speed date, but honestly, it isn’t the worst idea in the world.

Okay, it might still be.  But now she’s stuffed into (two pairs of Spanx, tights, grannie panties with extra girdle control and) a McQueen dress that made her look like she was auditioning for the new Beyonce video when she was in the dressing room.  Unfortunately, in real life, it rides up her thighs like it’s allergic to her knees and she’s already seen another woman wearing the exact same thing,  at least three sizes smaller.  She doesn’t remember being the kind of person who compared herself to other women, especially not poorly, but maybe that’s why it’s called a dating pool. You gotta swim to the top, she says to herself as she smiles vacantly into the dimly lit room.  

Her hands feel empty without the baby in them, or at least something that belongs to him.  She’s gotten used to constantly juggling something--a phone call, a pacifier, three stuffed toys and a diaper change simultaneously on a moving subway car--she’s surprised that evolution hasn’t found a way to give mothers a third arm.  It’s just another way God hates women, really.  And as she shares this theory with her first, second, and then third potential suitors, she isn’t remotely prepared for the blank stares she gets in return.  

“And you know how it is,  the second the server sets down your food, your baby is all, “Wah, I’m hungry! I pooped!  I have a gas bubble the size of the Bronx!””

Continued blank stare, and she wonders if (illegible scrawl on nametag) even speaks English.  This is her A plus material.  These are her Mommylogues and they kill in the conference room.  Granted, Morgan forces everyone to slow clap.  But still.  “Gas bubble?”  She repeats lamely, and he raises his hands in defeat and confusion just as the bell sounds.  Praise Baby Jesus.

“Girl, you sure know my candies.” She recognizes the voice as Casey’s lanky frame fills the vacated space.

She gapes, her jaw slack.  “What the hell are you even doing here?  Don’t you live in California?  Did someone send you here?  Morgan?  Again?”

He squints at her.  “I was not contacted for any further Baby Daddy interventions, no.”

“Casey, this could be considered stalking.”

“I guess it could be if I knew you were going to be here.”

“So.  You mean to tell me that you just showed up at a single parent dating event three thousand miles outside your home because you wanted to?”

He shrugs.  He does noncommittal with an aplomb that isn’t quite fair.  But neither is his presence. “I’m thinking of moving back to the City.  Dope Feat is franchising here, I had to come and check things out, and I figured….”

“You wanted to swoop in on some tired moms while they were good and vulnerable?”

She’s seen her words land on him before, and these don’t fall softly.  “This isn’t some scam, Mindy.”

“You don’t have any kids!”

“No, but I’ve been on Christian Mingle, I’ve been on J Date, and no, I have NOT been on Ashley Madison.  I just thought maybe I’d run into a nice Mama ready to settle down with a former man of the cloth.”  He drums briefly on the table, considering her reaction, and an equal mix of relief that she let him go and nostalgia for the giant man-child washes over her.  “Plus, my squad goals now include having a couple of little rugrats under foot by the big four-oh, and I’m not getting any younger, Mindy.”

“Oh please, you can shoot them out until you’re 87 years old and your jewels are dangling down by your knees.”

Casey pulls a face as if he’s just tasted something foul.  “Okay…”  He draws out the syllables.  “And anyway, while we’re accusing people, you’re not single, either.  You and Danny---”

She shakes her head.  “You saw it, after everyone boarded the Manhattan Meat Train?  What he said about marriage?”

“But he was going to change his mind.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Mindy toys with the paper tent that bears her name.  “No one ever really changes their mind.”

Casey raises an eyebrow.  She’s going to disregard his doubt, since his indecisiveness was almost exactly why she left.  His hair is shorter now, and his face is leaner, with a little bit of stubble, and she doesn’t think she’s ever been more attracted to him than in this weird bar in this weird pick-up situation.  She finds herself wondering if his tongue still tastes like grapes, which looking back was probably from all that church wine.  Casey is familiar, and she knows his risks and his benefits.  She can’t say that for anyone else here, other than herself.  And honestly, at this point, she can really only speak for Casey with any authority.

“You wanna get out of here?”

“You read my mind, babe.”  Their chairs squeak against the hardwood floor as they vacate the premises, Mindy’s name tent clattering to the floor.

Casey’s hands are twisted in her hair, his lips warm against her jaw and the curve of her neck, and the bathroom counter is sharp against her ass, even through her layers of lycra body armor.  She isn’t going to think about the last time she was flung up against a paper towel dispenser, or with who, plus this feels almost as good as a fresh fruit picnic date with dreamtime Becks.  “Mindy, your bazooms have certainly become more decisive these days.”  Casey says dazedly into her cleavage, even though she’s been considering them as more utilitarian than sexual lately.

He unzips her dress and her breasts spill out unfettered because she could not locate a bra in her current collection that didn’t look like it was issued by a women’s prison, and he visibly blanches when he views them live, and in color.   “Damn, girl.”  

It isn’t exactly lost on Mindy that her areola are now both deep brown helipads but he doesn’t have to point it out, and it doesn’t do much to enhance the mood, if there was even one to begin with.  “It’s hormones, you dope.”

“No, it’s not that...I mean, they’re just not the cans I remember... They’re grrrr---eat!”

Briefly, she imagines that it cannot be accurate information that her brain is processing:  it’s impossible for her to believe that her breasts were just patronized on her first remotely sexual outing since giving birth, in a public restroom by an ex that’s scamming on single moms, even if he purports to be ready to settle down.

There is no bottom here.  It is all bottom.  

She doesn’t even proffer a formal explanation for her quick retreat, only that she’s tired and she wants to go home.  As she leaves the bar, she watches Casey lean over another table, “Girl, you sure know my candies.”  

That’ll work again on someone, she knows that for certain.

No less mortified, Mindy catches the train back toward her new place, and somewhere near  Franklin Street, she feels an almost magnetic pull toward Danny’s stop.  From her conservative estimates, she could be on his doorstep in no less than six minutes, even if she hobbles there in her not quite broken in new heels.

Six minutes, and she might be able to reclaim her old life.  The one that didn’t feel as though she was squeezing into a too small dress.  The one that didn’t feel like a game of house gone wobbly and strange.

Except the subway doors open with a metallic whoosh, and she suddenly contracts one of those locked-in syndromes she learned about in med school, her body completely immobile despite the pleading of her brain for her to move forward.

Instead a young couple boards, along with their own crying infant, and the same breasts that frightened Casey into becoming a cartoon cereal mascot leak with the urgency to feed not just her own child, but now apparently all children.  

Her brand new dress suddenly unreturnable and drenched in breast milk, Mindy pushes open her front door to find Peter asleep on the sofa, baby monitor clutched in his hand.  

Four layers of dampened foundation garments discarded, she collects herself long enough to pump and dump the remainder of the two mojitos she managed to drink that evening, the mechanical hiss of the breast pump the only noise in her apartment.  

There’s a soft knock at  her bedroom door, and Peter enters, a blanket crease evident across his right cheek.  She doesn’t even bother to cover herself more than she already has.  “Never again, Pete.  Never again.”

He sits on the edge of her bed and gives her that concerned look she’s been getting a lot lately.  It’s like people on the street can sense that she’s wandering.  And maybe still a little lost. “Aw, it couldn’t have been that bad, kid.”

She just wants to get the pumping over with so she can kiss the top of Ben’s soft hair, smell that unmistakable Ben-baby smell, and sleep at least for the next four and a half hours, uninterrupted.  It’s a fool’s errand, she knows.  “It was a nightmare.  That I’ll tell you about tomorrow.  But,”  The air around them is still enough that the mechanism in the pump sounds like it’s whispering something as it draws out her milk and whisks it away, “Wait a second.  Does it sound like the breast pump is calling me a slut?”  

“No, that’s ridiculous,” Peter stops, holding his hand against her knee while he cocks his head and listens, “How could a machine know that you’re a B.O.W.?”  A beat. “OMG, that breast pump is totally calling you out your name, girl!”

 _Sssssllut... Sssssllut._..bounces off the walls, and Mindy can’t fathom how her breast pump knows she just tried to get back in the saddle, and was immediately thrown from the horse.  “Oh, Pete, I’m going to be alone forever now.” She disconnects the judgmental device and buries her face into a throw pillow.

“Stop it.  We can’t keep having this conversation.  You’re not.”  He peels the pillow out of her hand and sets it gently by her side.

“You don’t have to continue lying to me, Pete.  I’m onto you. Clearly, Danny was the only person who was ever going to love me and I gave that up.  Apparently just so I could get slut and boob shamed all in the same night!”

Peter’s mermaid blue eyes get serious, and maybe, just maybe, goosebumps ripple up her arms.  “He’s not the only one, and you know it.  Yeah, okay, he loved you the best way he knew how.  But it wasn’t ever the best way for you.”

Mindy shrugs, but she also knows he’s right.  “That’s probably true, but I still almost went there tonight.”  She says it more into the blanket she’s pulled up over her chest than to him. Maybe she should be more modest around Pete.  This isn’t a nudist colony.  “Like, literally, went there.  His stop was so close.  I could smell the leather from the subway.”

“But you didn’t.  You’re a stronger woman than I am.”  He shakes his head, “You know you what I mean.  Because if it were me, and someone had given me a sweet gift like Benny Rogers, I’d be riding that dude off into the sunset.”  He blinks, “Again, you know what I mean.”

“You’re a dork.”

“I am dork that knows you did the right thing tonight.  Except for the part where you went speed-dating.  What are you doing trying to do, give that sweet boob milk away for free?”  He teases, close enough that she can smell the waxy flavor of his tropical bubble gum.

She pulls away slightly, only startled for the moment.  This has happened before, maybe not this way, and when Mindy kisses Peter,  this time with intention, she decides that kissing him isn’t at all about the things that she’s lost.  Just the ways that she could actually win.

  
  
  


 


	11. Chapter 11

The strangest thing about sleeping with Peter, she decides later, is that the actual relief is in the awkwardness. It's good to know her body more or less does the things she wants it to do, but it's even better to find that out with someone who seems just as uncomfortable and eager and frankly surprised by everything as she is.

She and Danny had been good at sex. Great, actually. He couldn't play the piano for shit, but his hands never faltered on her. The kissing was like being set on fire, and it only got better from there.

Peter kisses like he's hungry, not starving and it's nice. It's nice to be kissed like there's time just to kiss. She's wearing barely more than a blanket and they're horizontal in her bed in less than 2 minutes, but the kissing slows down once she's on her back. He plays with her hair a little, and she can feel him grinning like an idiot as he kisses his way down her neck. It's hard to believe this guy was such a slow beginner when it comes to women and pleasure because he's really nailing some erogenous zones with the right amount of teeth and a lazy pace that makes her simmer in her own skin.

He's more careful with her breasts this time. He's seen her topless dozens of times, and she worries as he tugs the blanket away from her that he's not going to be able to separate Mindy-the-milk-machine from Mindy-who-likes-to-be-admired. It doesn't come up. As the owner-operator of a pretty modest bust all her life she's not been the recipient of much motor boating, but Peter gives it the old college try, which makes her laugh. Which makes him laugh.

Laughing hasn't felt this good in a long time.

His shirt comes off easy enough and she feels too shy to make a grab for his basketball shorts. He's softer than Danny, softer than most guys she's dated. Then again, when she wants to eat sundaes he's the first to grab a spoon and it's good to feel like eating isn't a spectator sport. She likes it. She likes him. And not all of him is soft. Thank God for basketball shorts and the complete lack of ambiguity they offer when you're not sure you still have what it takes to turn someone new on. 

It feels pretty reciprocal because he doesn't seem deterred by poochiness she tried to double Spanx into submission before she even let someone see her fully clothed. He sucks on her skin all the way down to the miserable beige underwear, the last remaining article of clothing between them. He seems flummoxed for a second and she twists self consciously, trying to wiggle up into a sitting position. “I don't usually wear these. Not... they're supposed to be nude, but.”

“You're not white,” he finishes for her. “Let's see what you look like nude.” He hooks his fingers under the waistband and pulls and actually throws them in the waste basket. She can feel his breath on her body as he murmurs. “That's way better.”

She has to stop him after a couple minutes because enthusiasm can't make up for technique. She has the brief, cruel thought that whatever marriage meant to Lauren, she must not have meant to stay with him if she'd never bothered to help him learn a little more. Fuck her for doing that to him. Fuck her for never really being with him. She taps politely on his head. “Peter, if we're doing this we need a condom. I am not going through all that again.”

“What? You don't think you'll have any more babies? Don't you think Ben would like a brother or a sister?”

“Are you kidding me? Are we having this conversation right now?”

“Nope. No we are not. Hold on.” He races out the door and comes back with her handbag.

“Peter, I don't have condoms, that's why I asked you.”

He unbuttons the flap of the bag and pulls out a strip of three she's never seen in her life.

“Where did those come from?”

“I put them in there.”

“You did what?”

“Yeah, didn't want you giving HPV to a rando you banged on speed date night.” He grins at her and she wants to laugh, but it's kind of not funny too.

“You thought I was going to sleep with someone tonight?”

“Well?” He gestures at his own obvious erection and she can't help herself. She laughs.

He throws the condoms on the bed next to her and pounces on her, kissing her until she stops.

“Goddamnit, Peter,” she whispers, tearing the packet open.


	12. Chapter 12

“I don’t know, it just seemed like the right thing to do.  If I could explain Peter…”

Jeremy seems visibly shaken after Mindy announces that she may or may not be having sex with their former co-worker.  “It would take a team of psychiatrists to explain Peter.  I’m more concerned with how you found yourself in bed with him.”

“What’s to know? Last night, he rocked Ben to sleep by singing most of the Caddyshack soundtrack and made me a surprisingly delicious Bro-conut smoothie.  For the grand finale, we sporked.” Peter’s vernacular has a way of sneaking into her vocabulary, like so much insidious ivy.

Jeremy winces, and Mindy wonders if she should be wincing more often, too. Her sense of shame seems to beg for reinforcements lately. “For the love of God, don’t ever expand on that last sentence.”

“I don’t know. It’s nice. Uncomplicated. It’s the exact opposite of what I came from.” Peter reminds her of all the guys she knew in high school, or more accurately, watched in high school. The ones that she would go out of her way to avoid in the hallways; afraid of the noogies and wedgies and swirlies that they threatened, and now one of those guys had somehow made his way into her bedroom. Braiding her hair because his sister taught him how to, caring for Ben with a warmth that she envies at times, and she wonders when she’s finally going to realize that people aren’t always what they present on the outside.

“Well, perhaps that’s for the best. Take that with a grain of salt, all I do is uncomplicated and I can’t say I’m any better for it. But I can see how it might be a nice change of pace. Minus the propensity to drink lager. Disgusting.” Sensing her reluctance, “Mindy, it’s fine. It’s two people who have a lot in common finding each other after a difficult time. It’s natural. Dare I say, it’s good for you.”

“He’s a divorcee and I’m a spinster. We’re going to die alone, together.”

“But before you die,” Jeremy pauses, reconsidering, “What happens?”

“We’re best friends.”

“I seem to remember a similar story…” His stupid British face crinkles into a knowing smile and briefly, she’d like to slap it right off.

It doesn’t make any less sense than the last relationship she fell into, and at least this time, they want the same things.

 

* * *

 

  


“Pete, you have to see this.” She tugs him into the nursery. “Look.”

“When’d Danny get here?” She isn’t sure at what point she’s stopped being surprised when Danny surfaces miraculously in one of the rooms of her house, because even with his bizarre schedule, it seems to happen on a regular basis anymore.

Mindy shrugs listlessly, as she’s transfixed by Danny and Ben’s identical sleeping positions. Danny lies on his side, head resting on the bend of his elbow, and inches away, Ben does the same. Their matching plush lips part at the exact miniscule distance. “Look at him.”

She can’t stop the tears, or explain why she can’t see it anymore, the image of tiny, five month old Ben, all sixteen pounds and mane of glossy black hair, snoring softly next to his father.

“Hey, what’s up, kid?” Peter pats at her arm, “That was cute as hell. I just posted it on Insta, tweeted it, and--” He frowns at his smartphone, “Oops, swiped it on Tinder.”

Laughter bubbles up over the lump in her throat, “Danny’s going to murder you.”

“If his weapon is being ridiculously adorable, I’m already gone.”

She sighs. “What am I supposed to tell Ben?”

“About my murder? Tell him: It was worth it.”

“Haha.” Mindy laughs hollowly, “No, about why he can’t be with his dad every day.”

“He is with him, every day. Annette’s gonna make a full recovery, he’ll be around more—Oh,” Peter nods, “You mean, why aren’t you with his dad?”

“Yeah.”

Peter considers momentarily, and takes enough time that it causes Mindy to worry that every reason she had six months ago is completely invalid, “Because you couldn’t settle for maybe and you loved Ben too much to make him settle for it either.” He glances back at the nursery, “You know that he’s kicking himself. That he isn’t here more…not being able to hit that,” Peter gestures at her ass. “Let yourself off the hook, Nelson Mindela. You’re in a prison of your own devising. Just come back to bed.”

She closes the door gently, the lock clicking softly into place. On the other side of the door, she listens to the snores of her son and his father for a few seconds before joining Peter in their bedroom.

 

* * *

 

  


Time can’t possibly heal everything, because life isn’t the movies, and the credits don’t actually roll over a finished product.  But at some point, Mindy knows that she and Ben and Danny and Pete are actually okay. That maybe what she’d always pictured, with the nine muses and the reality television film crew, isn’t lost, it’s just that she’s found an entire other life that works just as well.

And despite his protests, Danny seems to have come to a kind of peace. As peaceful as someone who refuses to recognize yoga as a viable form of exercise can be.  From the outside, maybe their life looks a little like a news special on alternative parenting strategies, but inside, it feels like it fits. It feels like a family.

They spend holidays together, and Ben turns one, with a party that envies anything that Mindy’s ever seen on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

Danny stays after to help with the clean up, and she meets him in the nursery, struggling to re-organize Ben’s toy shelf. She kneels by his side, and they silently reshuffle stuffed animals and toy cars and model trains to fit the small space. Danny mumbles something about meaning to build a bigger shelf, and she has a strange flashback to nightmares she used to have when she was pregnant.

He leans back on his heels to survey their handiwork, and reaches out a hand, to help guide her back to her feet. They sit together on the edge of the extra bed, and Danny sighs. “What a year, huh?”

“I can’t believe I pushed that giant Sicilian head out of my vagina a year ago tonight. I thought he’d rip me right in half.”  

“You did great, Min.” He pats her thigh, and she realizes that this is the first conversation they’ve had in over a month that wasn’t via text message, email, or post-it note. “We made it through the first year.”

“And we’re not divorced, so, I guess you got what you wanted, right?” Mindy asks. She really doesn’t mean it to be cruel, although the year before, she might have.

“Yep.” His lips and his eyes don’t appear to agree on a sentiment, and his expression turns briefly into a wincing smile. He toys with a stuffed duck, the same one whose tag fascinates their son, and Mindy wonders if the interest isn’t genetic.

“Did you use up all your words?” She makes the sign for more, one of the ASL words they’ve taught Ben, and Danny purses his lips.

“Min.”

“No, come on, don’t get all…” She twists her mouth into something grim and fang-y, “I think I finally see that neither of us was right, exactly, and neither of us was wrong.”

Danny shakes his head, the duck turning somersaults in his hand, “I was wrong.” He mumbles.

“What was that now?”

He glances at her, through the shade of his lashes, “I was wrong. We should have…I should have asked you to marry me.”

Her stomach plunges into her ballet flats. Woulda, shoulda, coulda is not a game she’s willing to play at this stage. They’ve come so far. “Come on, don’t say that.  What we have now is nice, Danny.”

“Nice isn’t the same as happy.”

The implication tears at her.  “You’re not happy?”  

“I’m fine, Min.”

“Oh stop with that. We’re partners in this, and Ben has his dad and his mom and Pete and---“

“Ben’s gonna have a lot more questions than he’s gonna have answers. I just, I wish I could have had more time, you know? I could have gotten used to the idea.”

“That is very romantic, Danny. Getting used to the idea of marrying me. I think I’m glad neither of us changed our minds.  Because that means there would always have been one of us that wasn’t getting what we needed.  Maybe one day you’ll get used to this, the way things are now.”

She remembers the Danny who sat in the hospital waiting room and told her he wasn’t ever going to be a dad, and now four years later, she knows that he has more than he’d even dreamt possible.  And she also remembers the Danny that had been left so many times that he didn’t think not being left was ever a possibility, either.  

“What? It takes me awhile to adjust to things. You know I’m still not in love with the idea of Ben learning to walk.”  Ben’s been toddling for the better part of a month, careening through rooms with his arms over his head like a young monkey.  Even between the three of them, they can barely keep up.

“And you know who he runs toward? You.”

“Know why? Because he’s running away from you.” Danny teases. “And your six point plan for getting into a five star pre-school.”

“First of all, it’s a five point plan. And Danny, if we want him to marry Blue Ivy’s inevitable younger sibling, we have to get into the right—“

“I’m good.” He holds up a hand, “I still have the email with the details. You printed it and taped it to my refrigerator, remember?”

Mindy’s about to retort when cry of protest invades from the other room and Ben bursts into the back bedroom, his bottom lip curled into a pout. "When did this guy become such a tyrant?" Danny asks, looking towards their sulking son.

"Pete's started calling him Osama-Ben-Laden," she says and immediately regrets it, waiting for his hands to clench, for the inevitable sharp remark, but he just grins.

“He’s getting to be so opinionated.” Mindy offers.

“Like his Ma.” Danny smiles. “He’s a good kid.”

“He’s a great kid.”

“The best.” Danny’s face brightens.  

“He’s got great parents.”

“The best.” He leans over to kiss her forehead, lingering just long enough for her to wonder if she’s still making the right choice. _It’s ridiculous to be nostalgic for someone who never really left_.

He scoops Ben into his arms, burying his nose briefly in the crown of his head.  She knows from experience that it is the best smelling place on Ben’s body.   “And I wanted to tell you...I’ve been wanting to say that I’m sorry that I told you that you were ruining Ben’s life.  You didn’t.”

It stops her heart a little, thinking about that night, his face.  Those words.  It’s strange how she’s carried them with her all this time, and they’ve protected her as much as they’ve threatened to hurt her.  “Thank you, Danny.”  

He stares at her for a moment more, searching her face until she finally watches his window pane eyes shutter.  He moves forward, like he’s thinking of kissing her, but instead sniffs at the air and turns Ben so that his rear is up toward his nose.  Danny carries their son to the changing table, and sets about deftly removing the offending diaper.  It’s funny how surgeons’  hands end up translating into more mundane talents, like quickdraw diaper changes. “Anyway, I used to think that Ben was going to end up like me, not really feeling like—feeling like his life was harder than it had to be, or that he’d feel alone.”

Mindy frowns.  She’s been so caught up in chasing a toddler and his desire to explore every electrical outlet and trash can in a thirty mile radius, she’s barely had time to stop and think that she’s come further than Danny when it comes to recovering from their parting ways.  That it’s possible he hasn’t recovered at all.  “He won’t be.  We’ll make sure of that.”

Danny’s eyes are slightly glassy. “No, I don’t think that anymore. There’s too many of us around.  It takes a village and whatnot.”  A bit of relief glances through her,  “But you know what I did get right?”

“What’s that?”

He pitches the old diaper into the trash can, and comes back to sit next to her on the bed.  Ben scrambles underfoot, weaving first through his father’s legs, then Mindy’s, “There’s still more than one way to have a family.”

She wants to tell him that she always thought that parenting was the ability to make swift judgements for the protection of her child, and while that’s still partially true, more than anything, it’s the ability to make a series of increasingly questionable decisions and hoping against hope that everything still manages to turn out okay.  

“I’m glad we’re a family, Danny.”

She knows there’s something else that he wants to say, because she doesn’t remember what it was like for there not to be, but he just cracks a tiny smile instead.  “Thanks, Min.”

 

* * *

 

 

She can’t lie; there are days when she sees Peter in her bed and wonders if he didn’t just drop in from the air vent in her ceiling, like how did he actually get there?  There are days when Ben smiles and she can only see Danny, for miles, and she thinks that her heart might burst. But for every moment that stops her in her tracks, there is another one that pushes her forward.  

Truly though, it just leads her to wonder why in all those movies she’d watched over the years Tom Hanks never thought to demonstrate that the great love of your life might not be the ideal partner, but he’d still be an incredible dad, and you didn’t lose as much as you thought.

Because the things you truly needed to survive were always exactly where you started.

**Author's Note:**

> Alittlenutjob, I cannot thank you enough. There are not words. And I love all of yours.
> 
> Anna__S, I hope that I didn't disservice any of the work or effort you put into this piece, and thank you for all the wisdom, the suggestions, the early edits, and the thesis of this story. 
> 
> Lamuella, you were tough, but fair. Thank you for taking the time to make me more British.
> 
> Smapdi, you will always be my barometer. And the recipient of all my angst.
> 
> From alittlenutjob: I had been excited about this piece for some time and when it had to hit pause I quite foolishly said that I'd be interested in writing angst with likerealpeopledo and suddenly it was happening. I haven't done a shared work before, and I can't thank her enough for making it a really rewarding process and I couldn't be prouder of how it turned out. A seriously amazing experience and I don't know that I'd have embarked on such a thing with many other people (and I don't know that a friendship would be intact at the end with other people. This is hard work.)


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